2019 OPEN ENROLLMENT ENDS (most states)

As I noted a few days ago, now that the 2019 ACA Open Enrollment Period is actually underway and the approved individual market premium rate changes have been posted publicly for every state, I'm finally able to go back and wrap up my 2019 Rate Hike Project for the nine states which I was still missing final numbers for.

As I further noted, the approved rates in most of those states didn't change much compared to the preliminary/requested rate changes I had already analyzed earlier this year:

... the Maryland attorney general today filed a separate lawsuit in a Maryland district court. Among other things, he’s seeking an injunction requiring the continued enforcement of the law. Depending on how quickly the Maryland case moves, it’s possible we could see dueling injunctions—one ordering the Trump administration to stop enforcing the law, the other ordering it to keep enforcing.

That’s an unholy mess just waiting to happen. Now, it may not come to that. My best guess is that the Texas lawsuit will fizzle: any injunction will likely be stayed pending appeal, either by the Fifth Circuit or the Supreme Court, and the case is going nowhere on the merits. The Maryland lawsuit will likely prove unnecessary.

I don't have much to add to this other than to note how much this case underscores just how much power and importance state attorneys general have.

Normally at this point in the year I only do full rate hike write-ups for states when their approved rate changes are made public by insurance regulators. I'm making an exception for Texas, however, because my preliminary analysis of the statewide average premium changes back in June was missing a huge portion of the market--I only had around half the ACA individual market accounted for, and I repeatedly warned that the missing enrollment and rate change data could easily skew the statewide average higher or lower.

Well, it's early September now, and not only do I have access to pretty much all of the missing data now, some of the rate filings have changed significantly as well. At the time, I estimated Texas carriers as requesting average rate increases of just 1.5% overall, with them dropping around 10.6% if not for the ACA's individual mandate being repealed and Trump's expansion of #ShortAssPlans.

Unfortunately, while the SERFF database shows 2019 listings for most of the 11 carriers which offer ACA policies in Texas this year, it only actually has the filings posted for 3 of them so far: CHRISTUS, Sendero and FirstCare Health Plans (aka SHA, LLC). Even then, those three carriers hold a pretty small share of the market, totalling just 65,000 enrollees. That means I only have actual 2019 rate data for about 5% of the ACA market available so far.

Now that it appears that the full list of states and counties eligible for hurricane (or windstorm, in the case of Maine) Special Enrollment Periods (SEP) has settled down, Huffington Post reporter Jonathan Cohn asked an interesting question:

How if at all do you allow for the extensions in FL, TX, etc.? Or, to put another way, how many post-Dec 15 signups through https://t.co/bhGNSognZK do you expect?

The closest parallel to this particular situation I can think of was the #ACATaxTime SEP back in spring 2015. In that case, it was the first year that the ACA's (defunct as of this morning) Individual Mandate was being enforced, and a lot of people either never got the message about being required to #GetCovered or at least pretended that they didn't.

I've saved Texas for last because, frankly, I haven't been able to make heads or tails out of their actual average rate increases for next year (and unlike smaller states which might not move the needle on the national average anyway, Texas has one of the largest populations in the country, so a substantial error here can also impact the national numbers significantly).

Back in early August, I pieced together a rough average of the requested rate increases for the Lone Star State of around 20% if CSR payments are made or 32.5% if they aren't:

CMS Announces Special Enrollment Periods for Americans Impacted by Recent HurricanesAgency provides special open enrollment periods for 2017 Medicare and Exchange coverage

As a result of Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) will make available special enrollment periods for all Medicare beneficiaries and certain individuals seeking health plans offered through the Federal Health Insurance Exchange. This important step gives these individuals and families who have been impacted by the hurricanes the opportunity to change their Medicare health and prescription drug plans and gain access to health coverage on the Exchange immediately if eligible for a special enrollment period.

Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, MD, declared a public health emergency in Texas on Saturday as Hurricane Harvey was pounding the state's coast.

Harvey made landfall late Friday night with winds topping 130 mph. Forecasts called for the storm to hover over the state for 5 days or more, possibly drenching some areas with as much as 50 inches of rain. Hundreds of thousands were without power and the National Weather Service said parts of Texas could be "uninhabitable for weeks or months."

"Many Medicare beneficiaries have been evacuated to neighboring communities where receiving hospitals and nursing homes may have no health care records, information on current health status or even verification of the person's status as a Medicare beneficiary. Due to the emergency declaration and other actions taken by HHS, CMS is able to waive certain documentation requirements to help ensure facilities can deliver care," an HHS statement read.

Whew! OK, Texas was a bear for obvious reasons...13 different carriers (well, 12 really...Centene is new to their market). Several more are dropping out (Aetna, Allegian, Cigna, Humana, Memorial Hermann and Prominence), but suposedly theyonly have around 64,000 enrollees in TX combined. Texas's total individual market is actually closer to 1.6 million, so I'm obvoiusly missing a big chunk of enrollees below (and before my regular commenters say it: Yes, I'm sure the off-exchange TX indy market has shrunk this year, but I find it hard to believe it's shrunk by over 60% already).

Anyway, I've managed to plug in one hard request percent for each carrier--the FULL Trump Tax for 3 of them, the NO/PARTIAL Trump Tax for most. In Vista's case, they're off-exchange only so the CSR issue isn't a factor anyway. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find the enrollment number for Community Health Choice, so I don't know what their share of the market is, which could make a big difference if they have high enrollment. I've plugged in a flat 100,000 enrollees for the moment, but will change that if I'm able to track the actual number down.

Well, Republican U.S. Senator John Cornyn, the Majority Senate Whip (and therefore one of the biggest shots in the Senate) shot off quite a promise about the concerns regarding up to 32 million people potentially losing their healthcare coverage in the event the ACA is repealed:

One of the top concerns is what will happen to individuals who became eligible for Medicaid with its expansion under Obamacare. The Senate's No. 2 Republican, however, promised that no one who got coverage under Medicaid expansion will lose it.

When Conrnyn was asked if he was concerned about people who've benefited from Medicaid expansion losing coverage, he said it was a shared concern.

(sigh) OK, after doing this for Michigan earlier today, I said that I wasn't gonna do this for every state, and I'm not...but the irony is that the 19 non-expansion states are actually easier to compile this data for than the expansion states...because you can't rip away healthcare from someone you never provided it to in the first place. Anyway, someone requested that I do a county-level estimate of how many people would likely lose their healthcare coverage in Texas under a full repeal of the Affordable Care Act, so here it is.

However, I also noted that I'd make sure to fill in the approved rates for the remaining 10 states as they came in, for completeness sake...and today, thanks to the HHS Dept. cutting the ribbon on 2017 Window Shopping at HealthCare.Gov, I've also been able to fill in the blanks for five of the remaining states all in one shot (the other five remain elusive).

According to a release from the company on Tuesday, the firm will no longer offer individual market plans through the Affordable Care Act in Dallas, Texas, and New Jersey.

..."We hope to return to these markets as we carry on with our mission to change healthcare in the US."

The "we hope to return" part suggests that Oscar will continue to be available off the exchange in New Jersey, since completely pulling out of a state means a carrier has to wait at least 5 years before re-entering. So...there's that, anyway.

...Oscar currently covers 7,000 people in Dallas and 26,000 in New Jersey.

Last year, the Texas ACA-compliant individual market carriers requested an average rate hike of around 16%, although it was a pretty fuzzy guesstimate since I couldn't track down the average rate hikes for about 25% of the market other than knowing that whatever it was, it was under 10%.

This year, the good news is that CMS has started postingall rate change requests whether over or under 10%, making it easier to fill in some of the data. The bad news is that 3 of the 19 carriers offering individual policies next year redacted any data giving a clue as to what their current enrollment numbers are: CHRISTUS, Community First and Oscar Insurance.

The other 16 carriers did provide those numbers pretty clearly (except for Sendero, which only gave a projection of "member months" which I had to divide by 12 to get a rough enrollment estimate).